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I Couldn’t Resist…Youtube vs Broadcast.com 10 years ago

“YouTube, he told NewTeeVee, is only going to earn revenues of about $70 million to $90 million in 2008. InVideo ads – the kind Sanchez claimed Google ripped off – will be an even smaller part of the pie.”

I recognize this isn’t apples to apples. These are 1999 dollars, broadband penetration was dramatically lower back then and we weren’t an advertising supported mode, but then again, we didn’t pay to subsidize the bandwidth of every non commercial video on the internet and do everything we possibly could to avoid copyright law.

I just can’t help but post a link to my original article and a Broadcast.com quarterly release. If only we had today’s bandwidth costs back then…

broadcast.com Reports Record Second Quarter Revenue Revenue Increased 130% From Same Period in 1998 – Company Financial Information

Broadcast.com (Nasdaq: BCST) Wednesday reported revenue totaling $13.5 million for the second quarter ended June 30, 1999, an increase of 130% over $5.9 million in the same period in 1998, and a 31% increase over the first quarter of 1999. Net loss for the second quarter of 1999 was $1.9 million, or $0.05 per basic and diluted share. This compares with a net loss of $3.5 million, or $0.11 per basic and diluted share during the second quarter of 1998.

Broadcast.com posted strong revenue growth, with revenue from Business Services increasing to $9.5 million for the second quarter of 1999, a 138% increase over the same period of 1998 and an increase of 34% over the first quarter of 1999. Business Services revenue represented 71% of the total revenue reported. Advertising revenue increased to $4.0 million for the quarter ended June 30, 1999, an increase of 114% over the same period of 1998 and an increase of 25% over the first quarter of 1999.

Todd Wagner, chief executive officer of broadcast.com said: “We continue to expand our turnkey business-to-business Internet broadcasting services, as we delivered 960 events in the second quarter of 1999, more than double the number of events in the second quarter of 1998 and a 45% increase over the first quarter of 1999. In addition, our recently signed agreement with Level 3 Communications allows us to deliver high- quality broadband content to mass, scalable audiences, demonstrating our commitment to continuing to scale our network to provide our customers with a complete, end-to-end broadband and digital media solution.”

Broadcast.com (Nasdaq: BCST) is the leading aggregator and broadcaster of streaming media programming on the Web with the network infrastructure and expertise to deliver or “stream” hundreds of live and on-demand audio and video programs over the Internet or intranets. The broadcast.com Web sites offer a large and comprehensive selection of programming, including sports, talk and music radio, television, business events, full-length CDs, news, video, commentary and full-length audiobooks. Broadcast.com broadcasts on the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and its programming includes 420 radio stations and networks, 56 television stations and cable networks, and game broadcasts and other programming for over 450 college and professional sports teams. Broadcast.com also provides Internet and intranet broadcasting services to businesses and other organizations, including turnkey production of live and archived press conferences, earnings conference calls, investor conferences, trade shows, stockholder meetings, product introductions, training sessions, distance learning telecourses and media events. For more information on broadcast.com and its live and on-demand programming, visit http://www.broadcast.com.

Cuban,When I worked for you at Audionet->Broadcast it was some of the best times of my life. You treated your staff like family. I have a deep respect and loyalty to you. You made me & my family rich beyond my wildest dreams. When Y! bought us they destroyed it all. How sweet it is to watch as the mighty Y! takes it\’s last dying breaths.

I guess I would have to say that I really don\’t see anything wrong with this \”look back\” because it shows me how far we have come … and more importantly where we are going. I am a college student and I love hearing my CS professors talking about how they had this same idea (youtube) in part because of its overall simplicity. I guess I might be a little young for the internet to really be able to reference broadcast.com, but seeing youtube change the face of entertainment as it is doing is almost jawdropping. Who in this field doesn\’t say I could have done that!

Last I heard youtube was the 8th largest site for the U.S.(correct me if I\’m wrong) with the average viewer being 33 years old. The statistics can go on but the fact people are out there spending just as much time on youtube as they did in front of \”the tube\” is unbelievable.

I think these comments get really interesting towards the bottom about the internet being \”obsolete\” in a few years with \”the grid\”. I wonder what this revolutionary \”grid\” will bring to monsters such youtube…will it become a broadcast.com? is that too far ahead? I don\’t know but this post did a great job of bringing the not so long ago past in front me. Looks like broadcast worked out great and I would like to see anyone faced with those numbers not get greedy so to speak. excellent read and comments.

Money just seems so empty. Is that how we measure success in this society? Seems kind of perverted to me. What REALLY matters to us? Is acquiring wealth the true meaning of life? Money just seems so lacking in fullfillment to me. 🙂

Well, I remember broadcast.com, and I enjoyed it. Of course, we didn\’t have nearly the bandwidth then we do now, nor did we have the content options. However, and this is a big however, YouTube has fundamentally changed the entertainment industry unlike anything else in the history of the Web.

People are now turning to the Web for their primary source of entertainment. I barely watch TV on a TV at this point. The networks and everybody else saw what a market there was for easy-to-access video content and jumped on it.

As for copyright, artists (hey, I\’m a musician and a writer) of all stripes will have to come to the realization that copyright per se is dead on the Web. I\’m not certain what affect that type of proclamation will have on the Web entertainment business, but I think the fact that YouTube has clearly survived despite some obvious copyright violations is proof of it.

As for TV, I think it\’s very much alive in one realm: High-def. The business you\’re in at the moment. High-def programming. Furthermore, it\’s not even so much that YouTube exists the way it does that renders TV, generally, as useless. It\’s the concept of on-demand, and the Internet provides it.

In fact, if I were networks — the big three — I\’d forego everything except the hits. You know, \”American Idol,\” \”The Office,\” \”CSI,\” etc., and then completely experiment with the rest of the time with unconventional fare in the off hope of landing a monster (like Idol).

Based on those numbers, it seems like Google overpaid for Youtube to a lesser degree than Yahoo did for Broadcast.com. It ended up costing Yahoo 5 billion+ in stock, if you believe Wikipedia (dangerous, I know, but I doubt they are off by 3.5 billion or more).

It\’s going to take a long time to pay off that $1.5 billion purchase by Google. Sometimes I wonder why these companies buy these web properties. I know I know, getting your brand in front of people\’s faces is everything but couldn\’t google just have expanded their \”google video\” brand and saved themselves a truckload of money rather than buy a \”hot internet property\” that has no real revenue streams. But how do you value free visitors?

Next question: What will you and other people do with the bandwidth we have in 5 and 10 years? The cost of bandwidth should go down 75% in five years and 90% in ten years, based on Moore\’s Law and the history of fiber capacity. Comcast just promised 50 meg lines available to 20M homes in two years, and others will follow. No one will predict it all, but I\’d welcome your projection. (And no, this isn\’t just about HD over the net. Been there, talked about that.) db

Nothing wrong with reminiscing. Just the other day I took a Google Maps tour of the places I used to live.

Maybe it wasn\’t a controversial post as so many like to see out of Mark, but I for one don\’t care. Always good to see the feed updated with a new post, no matter the topic.

Quality post…man to think of what you could have made and the difference only 10 years has made in technology and the economy. Wish I could have been in on broadcast.com or any of the genius Mark Cuban ideas. Looking forward to your next success.